Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

The flat had three rooms: a living space with a small kitchenette; a bedroom with a large double bed, a dressing table, an armchair and a standard lamp; and a tiny bathroom. There were no personal possessions here, nothing that would ever give a clue as to who occupied it and certainly nothing to suggest that it was a woman. No soft furnishings or items of comfort. Just what was necessary. Even the drawer full of make-up in her dressing table was a tool, and once she was inside, Maya headed straight for the bedroom and opened it.

Lipstick. Mascara. Perfume. Sometimes these weapons were as formidable as any gun, and she needed to apply them with care.

First, however, she showered, washing away the dirt of last night’s job with a tub of Swarfega she kept for that purpose. She noticed a spattering of blood on the inside of her wrist, and remembered bludgeoning the wound of her victim the previous night. It was difficult to scrub off, but soon her flesh was clean. She stepped out of the shower, quickly dried her skin and her hair, then returned to the bedroom. She sat naked at the dressing table, where she powdered her aching cheek so that the swelling was less visible, before fixing her make-up and applying a squirt of perfume to the top of her pale breasts.

The clothes she chose from her wardrobe left little to the imagination. Black hold-ups. Lace underwear. No bra, but a short white dressing gown with two pockets. Once she had done it up, she returned to her dressing table and opened an empty drawer. It had a false bottom, which she removed to reveal her small stash of weaponry. Rounds for her Beretta, a 9mm snubnose and a small knife. She took the snubnose and the knife, and placed one in each pocket of her dressing gown. Having replaced the bottom of the drawer, she took a seat in her bedroom armchair.

And here she waited.

As she waited, she thought. Of Amit, of her parents and of the past. And when those thoughts became too much for her to bear, she thought of the future. All her adult life had been devoted to the Institute, from the day she had been admitted into the training academy until today. Now, of course, was when it ended. She had her own battles to fight. If Mossad wouldn’t help her wage war on the Arabs, she would have to do it herself.

Time passed. The day slipped away and darkness crept into Maya’s flat. She switched on the standard lamp by her armchair and continued to wait. She knew Ephraim Cohen’s methods well. She had carried out his instructions often enough, after all. He would send someone today. If a job needed to be done, it needed to be done quickly. And if she refused to leave this flat, they would have to come to her. That meant she was in control, no matter what anybody else thought.

She heard the first noise a little before ten o’clock. It was very quiet, barely louder than the beating of her heart: the sound of the lock on the street door being picked. She loosened the dressing gown around her cleavage, then slipped her right hand into the pocket containing the snubnose and pointed it through the flimsy material of her gown, towards the door of her bedroom. Perhaps she would need the weapon instantly, but she hoped not. The noise would attract attention.

And besides, Maya Bloom had other plans for her expected, but unknown, guest.

She didn’t hear footsteps coming up the stairs, but then she wouldn’t have expected to. Any hitman worth the name should be able to tread quietly. The first she saw of him was his weapon, a suppressed handgun peeking round the corner of the door as it slowly opened to reveal a shadowy figure silhouetted in the frame.

Silence.

Her finger slowly caressed the trigger of her weapon.

‘Who are you?’ she whispered, injecting a note of fear into her voice. ‘How did you get into my…?’

‘Shut up.’

The figure stepped into the room. Maya saw a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, with black hair and stubble on his face. His voice had a cockney twang. She examined his weapon. A matt-black Glock, safe-action trigger.

‘Please,’ Maya whispered. ‘Don’t hurt me. I’ll do what you want…’

The young man took another couple of steps towards her.

‘ Please ,’ she said. ‘I’ll do anything…’ She kept the hidden gun pointing directly at him, ready to shoot at the slightest hint that he was going to use his.

He eyed her up and down. Maya understood the look. She understood that he was already hers.

Feigning timidity, she stood up. Her dressing gown was tied sufficiently loosely for her breasts to be exposed, and she saw the newcomer appreciating the sight. She understood assassins, understood their love of danger and of risk-taking, and that they were devoid of principle. And she understood men too. She knew what was going through this one’s head: that he was going to kill her anyway, so he might as well have her beforehand. It didn’t matter how good they were, they always thought with their dick first and their head second. It was one of the first things she’d learned during her training, and she’d used that knowledge more times than she could remember.

‘Get over to the bed,’ he instructed. ‘Lie down. Maybe I’ll let you live.’ The arrogance, she thought. This was why women made better killers than men.

Maya released the grip on her snubnose — she wouldn’t be needing it now. She was safe as long as this man’s sexual energy remained unspent. She did as she was told, positioning herself so that her knees were bent at the end of the mattress, her feet on the ground and legs slightly open. The man towered above her, lasciviously taking in the sight, then bent down and roughly yanked her knees apart. She felt the cold butt of his weapon being pressed into her right thigh at the same time as she felt herself being exposed by two rough fingers pulling her underwear to one side. And when she felt his tongue inside her, she gasped — feigning the arousal she never felt.

She let him continue for about ten seconds before slowly moving her left hand down to the pocket containing her knife. She moaned as she removed it, just to keep him interested.

‘You like that, huh?’ she heard him say, like some boorish stud in a porno flick.

‘Yeah,’ Maya replied in kind. She’d studied the movies, and she knew what guys liked to hear. But as she spoke, she raised her arm above her head. ‘Yeah, I like that…’

It was a single movement. She used the strength in her stomach muscles to sit up at the same time as she brought the knife arm down with all the force she had. The thin blade slammed into the back of the man’s neck with absolute ease, and with a second sudden movement, she pushed his head with her free hand so that he rolled on to his back. As she stood up, she saw his limbs twitching violently; his tongue, which just seconds before had been so busy, was still peeking out from his lips, surrounded by blood. It looked to Maya as though he had involuntarily bitten into it.

It took him about a minute to die. A minute during which a thick pool of blood seeped from the back of his neck and the twitching of his limbs receded into nothingness. Maya watched it happen, standing above her victim semi-clad and with a flat, dispassionate look in her eyes.

His death, she decided, once the corpse was still, was not enough. Her usual habit was to make things look like an accident, but tonight she had a different intention. She tightened her dressing-gown cord, then bent down and hauled his body on to the bed, ignoring the blood that smeared her hands, her feet and her gown. She rolled him on to his front, pulled out the knife and rolled him back again, before going about the awkward business of undressing him. In the end she found herself cutting strips of material away with the knife. Occasionally she scored the skin, but that hardly mattered now. Her victim was about to look a whole sight worse.